In the beginning, it is said, God made the heavens and the earth. He
made the seas and all that in them is, with the myriads of fish, the
toads, the snakes and afterward man. Then to grace His handiwork, He
created the heart of a woman--the loving, suffering, unteachable heart
of Eve.
The first tinge of thinking sorrow comes into a woman's heart at the age
of fifteen, and this was the beginning of Tessibel's sorrow, as she
lifted her feet over the hot sands and sped onward. Tessibel was what
most people would call a careless, worthless jade. She shamefully
neglected her father, but covered the fact to him by the wild, willful
worship which she bestowed upon him. If he uttered a word of
disapprobation she would fling herself, like a cat, upon his crooked
shoulders and bend back his head until the red of her lips met his---
the pathos in her red-brown eyes quieting his qualms as to the dirt he
had to go through to get into bed.
In the mornings, either in summer or winter, he was obliged to tumble
the ragged girl from the roped cot he had made for her (when at last she
had reached an age too old to sleep with him), and force her, grumbling
the while, to eat the bacon and fish he had prepared. But he seemed
happy through it all, for the brown-eyed girl brought back to his mind
the slip of a fishermaid who had died when Tessibel was born. True,
there was more copper in the girl's hair and eyes than there had been
in the mother's--more of the bright burnishing like that of a polished
old-fashioned kettle hanging over the spigot in a tidy housewife's
kitchen. But Tessibel's one room was never tidy nor had she a kettle. In
one iron frying pan she cooked the fish and bacon, while a small tin
pail held the water for the tea. These were the only cooking utensils of
the hut.
Tess could climb to the top of the highest pine tree in the forest
yonder; she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a
rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest
people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer
for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring
them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder lot of Minister
Graves.
According to the ideas of all who knew her, save her father and Myra
Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would
feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the
agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands;
or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for
her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened her
dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut,
and sped back of the weeping willow tree hanging in green fringes over
the cabin. She dropped quickly upon her knees before a large log, which
in some former time the flood-waters had dashed to its place.
Tessibel ran her red, bare arm into the hole in the end of the log. Then
she sat up and gazed around.
"He air gone," she said aloud, "he air gone. Ben Letts has took him,
damn his dirty hide. He ain't no more good than--"
Something caused her to close her lips. A large high-warted toad sprang
into her dirty lap and slipped to the ground through the rent in her
skirt. Tenderly she took the reptile in her fingers, for she loved this
warted monster who seemed by the turn of his head to reciprocate in some
way the devotion the girl showered upon him. She lifted him close to her
face, and intently searched his poppy eyes.
"I said, damn his hide, Frederick," she said in a low tone, "'cause I
thought he took ye. And ye ain't done nothin' to him, have ye? Ye was
just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or
ye'll git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye nuther, 'cause I
kisses ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when
he was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry him.
I'd rather kiss--"
Her sentence remained unfinished. She looked up to see a tall boy
leaning upon a rake, a boy with pale gray eyes, and an evil face. His
short hair looked as if it had passed through the fingers of a prison
barber. His blue-jean breeches were held up by a rope fastened in the
button holes with small iron nails, and the blue blouse which had been
clean that morning was now drenched with perspiration.
"Ain't ye got nothin' better to do than to be kissin' a toad," he
expostulated, without waiting for the girl to greet him, although she
had risen to her feet, holding fast to her reptile treasure.
"Ain't nothin' to you, air it, what I does as long as Daddy don't care?"
she retorted, and sullenly counted one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight long weeping willow leaves which had died that day and had
fallen to the ground. She gathered each leaf between her great bare toe
and its next-door neighbor, deftly throwing them aside as she counted.
"I care," stolidly said the boy coming nearer, "and ye air a goin' to
throw that toad away, does ye see? Ma says as how ye could be made into
a woman if ye hadn't got batty with birds and things. She says as how
when ye sing to the brat that yer voice sounds like an angel's, and
that's why the kid sleeps. He air a cryin' all the time to have ye sing
to him."
Tess hadn't expected this. She did love the tiny unwelcome child of Myra
Longman, a child without a father, or a place in the world. Tess loved
the babe because there was an expression in its eyes that she had once
seen in a wounded baby bird's ... a pitiful unborn expression which
would go with the brat to its grave.
She stooped down and placed the toad again in his hole, shoving him deep
down into his cavity, for the sun was going down and Frederick would
sleep as long as there were no flies about.
The boy spoke again.
"Mammy says as how if ye don't stop runnin' wild ye'll be worse than
Myry with another--"
Suddenly the clenched fist of the girl flew up and struck the fisherman
with a swiftness and force that took him from his feet. Tessibel was
standing over him rigidly.
"I hates ye, I hates ye, I'd ruther marry--yep, I'd ruther marry my toad
or a man as ugly as him than you, Ezry Longman, does yer hear, does yer
hear?"
The lumbering body raised itself from the ground. The squint eyes were
almost closed, only a glint of the gray ring that surrounded the pupil
showing between the lids.
"Ye think that ye can hide from me what ye be a doin'," burst out Ezra.
"Why did ye name that toad after the student of Minister Graves? Just
'cause he wears nice clothes and don't do no honest rakin' of hay, nor
catchin' a fish only by trollin'. Ye loves that feller, that's what ye
does."
Bewilderment leapt alive in the girl's brown eyes. The shade deepened
almost to black as the thought the boy had planted in the sensitive mind
took root and grew. Then the dirty young face flooded with crimson which
tinted the rounded neck and colored the low forehead, and Tess dropped
down beside the log and covered her face with her hands. The fisherman
was so surprised that he uttered not a word while the wild storm broke
over the girl's heart, dying away in a smothered moan.
Without a glance at the boy, she lifted herself slowly from the earth
and walking, erect and tall, into her father's hut, closed the door with
a bang. She slipped the leather fastening into its place and dazedly
adjusted the iron peg in the opening to hold it. Tessibel's heart had
manifested its hitherto unknown burden and the woman lived amid the dirt
and squalor of the fisherman's cabin.
Tessibel's peremptory leaving and the hauteur in her face were so
foreign to her that Ezra Longman did not dare follow. He leaned upon his
rake looking after her, his gray eyes gathered into an incomprehensive
squint. Had Tess again cuffed his ears, he would have been secretly
delighted; but this manner, so unlike her, seemed to take her as far
above him as that flock of black crows yonder, flying to the forest to
find shelter for the night.
"Tessibel," he called helplessly, under his breath, but Tessibel did not
hear. He limped away not knowing that she had passed as effectually out
of his life as if she had not dwelt in the rickety cabin on his right.